Why Aren’t ProcureTech Analysts Doing Their Jobs Anymore?

If you accept, as per our last post on the subject, that ProcureTech analysts are not doing their jobs anymore, then why?

While many will say it’s complicated because there is often no single easy answer that encapsulates the entire situation, the reality is that there are only a few overriding answers, especially when you consider that if a job is NOT being done, there are only two fundamental entities in the mix that could be responsible for it not being done: the analyst and the firm.

The Analyst

If the reason the job is not getting done lies solely on the part of the analyst, then, sadly, the analyst probably shouldn’t have their job because, frankly, that means the analyst is lazy or stupid. (And you should know by now this site is NOT whatever your definition of political correctness is.) Unless the analyst is being prevented from doing their job properly by (actions of) the firm, there are no other explanations.

Lazy and while we agree with a fellow analyst who bluntly stated humans are naturally wired to be lazy, we also believe that if you are, you shouldn’t be an analyst, because you can’t even hope to get it right unless you work tirelessly to get to the truth ignored by marketing soundbites, hidden by demo personnel, and apparently shrouded in mystery at the C-Suite level

Stupid with respect to the smarts they need to do their job; doesn’t mean they are otherwise a stupid person, but if you don’t have a solid tech background (with appropriate degrees, experience, and understanding), no matter how smart you think you are, you shouldn’t be a tech analyst (or vendors will pull wool over your eyes on a daily basis)

The Firm

The firm is often the problem, even if they don’t know they are. (And that’s why many of the best analysts in our space, many of whom worked at bigger firms at one point or another, are with smaller firms or on their own.)

Overwork
If the firm constantly overworks their analysts, doesn’t give them mental health days, doesn’t give them sufficient time off in the case of illness or family emergency/death, the analyst is going to be tired and/or distracted and not going to do a good job. Period.

UnderTraining
If the analysts don’t have all of the required skill sets and knowledge to be an analyst (deep knowledge of their area, deep knowledge of tech, profiles of an average platform and analyst to start from, the [preferred] methodology used by the firm, the unique methodologies/outputs produced by the firm, etc.), then it is the responsibility of the firm that hired them to ensure they get the proper training and education. Period. (Because an undertrained analyst can not produce good work.)

Bad Direction
If the analysts are told to do substandard work, ensure a certain vendor looks better than the rest in a map, or only write up the good parts, then any poor performance on the part of the analyst is entirely the fault of the firm giving them that direction.

And if the analyst isn’t doing their job, we’d wager this is the dominant reason. Especially when, of the big firms:

  • one will NOT include a vendor in their main map unless the vendor is a paying client
  • one changes their entry requirements every year so that it’s almost impossible for a non-client to make all of the entry requirements
  • one tends to only publish maps that are vendor sponsored up-front

The reality of the situation is that it’s quite hard to do unbiased research if you’re paid up front by a vendor for that research. Period.

Until the models change so that the only money taken from a vendor in relation to any published research report is an optional license after the fact, you can’t expect good, unbiased research or analysts to be allowed to do their jobs.

Are ProcureTech Analysts Doing Their Jobs Anymore?

Very good question. Let’s get down to definitions.

Analyst: a person who conducts analysis

Analysis: a detailed examination of the elements or structure

There are two key words here “detailed examination“. At the major analyst firms (i.e. Forrester, Gartner, Hackett, IDC, etc.), is this happening? And to what extent?

Those following LinkedIn will have seen a lot of posts putting down the major analyst firms (and one firm in particular) over the last few months, including:

And you have to wonder if they are doing a “detailed examination”?

Because, as

  • THE REVELATOR and the doctor have repeatedly pointed out, doubling down does not mean detailed inquiry, and technology first is (as it’s always been) a recipe for disaster
  • if firms are claiming a map is no longer relevant, then either the map is not analyzing technology (enough) or not doing a proper analysis with respect to actual marketplace needs for the technology
  • if the founder of one of the most significant supply chain analyst groups in existence is saying the most recent event was a tornado echo chamber of buzzword bingo and a vicious cycle of recycled hype—analysts feeding vendors, vendors feeding analysts. No one challenged the status quo. No myth-busting. No dragon-slaying. No industry policing. Just a milk-toast cycle with no actual analysis in sight

Then it seems actual analysis has flow the coup from at least one of these big shops (if not two or three). And if that’s the case, then what’s the point of these shops employing ProcureTech analysts?

Because an analyst should be

  • doing detailed technology examinations
  • giving their totally unbiased opinions, for better or worse,
  • telling buying organizations what’s important in analyzing vendor solutions and what’s not, and
  • telling vendors what they should be focussed on to serve the buying organizations they want to sell to

and should not be

  • defining arbitrary market parameters as to whom can be considered for a technology evaluation and whom can not (when it should come down to whether or not the vendor has a module that meets the core technology requirements from a stack and functional viewpoint),
  • analyzing AND scoring very subjective factors (“innovation”, “vision”, “sales strategy”, etc. etc. etc.),
  • repeating vendor soundbite and BS marketing ad nauseam and
  • accepting money to repeat vendor soundbite and BS marketing ad nauseam!!!

So while real ProcureTech analysts are sorely needed, the doctor also has to wonder if many of the existing ProcureTech analysts are doing their jobs anymore!

 

AI-Enabled, AI-Enhanced, AI-Backed, AI-Powered, AI-Driven, or AI-Native?

It DOES NOT matter. It’s ALL AI-Bullcr@p! Every last instance!

Vendors still won’t admit that AI is the new gold-standard for tech failure, including Procure-Tech, as evidenced by the fact that tech failure rates have shot up to an all-time high of 88% (see Two and a Half Decades of Project Failure). Nor will they admit that even if they have tech that works, that it’s not the be-all and end-all (because, as far as they are concerned, it’s going to slice, dice, and make virtual julienne fries of your data just like a good AI should) and may not be the right solution for you.

But those with any modern tech at all know that a lot of vendors out there claiming “AI” don’t have anything close to deserving the AI label, that they can blame all the failures on those vendors (because they are obviously the new silicon snake oil salesmen, right?), and are now trying to win the AI marketing war by claiming whatever phrasing their competition is using, or not using, proves that their opponent doesn’t have good tech, and definitely doesn’t have AI.

But it’s all bullcr@p, because all of the phrasing is bullcr@p, most of the vendors don’t have anything close to what should be considered AI, and, most of the time, it doesn’t matter whether or not the vendor has AI, only if the vendor’s tech solves your problems.

To make this clear, let’s look at each term, what some vendors say the term means, and why their definition is meaningless.

Term Vendor Definition What it Actually Means
AI-Enabled core features incorporate AI the vendor has injected a few analytical algorithms, but no guarantee they are actually advanced or anything close to what you should expect from AI
AI-Enhanced AI is added to the interface to give you the AI experience the vendor has wrapped a Gen-AI LLM (like Chat-GPT) to give you a meaningless conversational interface
AI-Backed AI is at the core of one or more functions one or more parts of the app are built around an algorithm the vendor is calling AI
AI-Powered External AI has been integrated to power our tech the vendor has wrapped Chat-GPT and integrated it directly into their app (letting unpredictable and undependable code run parts of the app)
AI-Driven AI has been built into the workflow and runs (part of) the app the vendor has decided to let AI control the application (for better or worse) and determine what algorithms to run, when, and why
AI-Native the entire infrastructure was built to support AI the vendor has built the entire application to support integration with AI systems (and may not have built any actual functionality)

Moreover, if you read any statements about how an infrastructure needs to be purpose built from the ground up to “serve data to AI models“, that’s an even bigger pile of bullcr@p because no application works unless it can serve data to the models it is based on, whether classical or modern or “AI”. All applications take in data, process it, and spit it out, so claiming that you need to build a special architecture to support AI is complete and utter bullcr@p.

Always remember the reality that:

  • true AI doesn’t exist (as no software is intelligent)
  • advanced algorithms do exist, but just slapping an AI label on an algorithm doesn’t make it any more advanced than it was yesterday
  • not just any advanced algorithm will do, it has to be appropriate to your problem
  • you don’t always need an advanced algorithm, you need one that gets the results you need

And then you can see through the vendor bullcr@p and focus in on finding a vendor with a solid solution that actually solves your problem, regardless of whether the vendor claims AI or not.

With Suites, What you are Sold Vs. What You Get Vs. What You Need are Three VERY Different Things!

A while back, Dan Gianfreda published a piece on LinkedIn on how what you need is not what you are sold when you buy a a shiny, “all-in-one” procurement platform that is 10X bigger than what you will actually use (on a multi-year contract with a massive implementation that takes months longer than promised and ensures you don’t have the majority of the functionality you need until the contract is almost up), and he was right. But it missed the full picture. The reality is that not only are you sold 10 times more than you will use, but what you will use doesn’t cover what you need, and with a poor selection, might only be one 10th of what you actually need!

In other words, you need to see the full picture:

As outlined in the response post, just because a suite has a module, there’s no guarantee that module is anywhere close to what the organization really needs, especially when the capabilities can vary greatly (and the definitions even more so). Sourcing can be a simple RFX or a multi-staged integrated RFX/Auction platform with embedded strategic sourcing decision optimization. We still see canned reporting modules sold as “modern spend analysis” when they are anything but. And most AI claims are pure BS (or an indication that you should probably run for the hills if that’s the only selling point).

Even if the suite theoretically has the core/must have functionality the organization needs, that’s only meaningful if that functionality is implemented in a way that supports the organizational processes and policies. If approval chains are required, tamper-proof audit logs need to be in place, validated process steps are needed for public sector compliance, and so on — and the suite has none of those, it don’t matter how user friendly, integrated, or “powerful” it is because the organization will NOT be able to use it.

Moreover, the core functionality differs by organizational type and since most platforms only do one of indirect, direct, services, capex projects, or tailspend well, selecting the wrong suite will render it totally useless for the majority of sourcing/procurement projects, which will add insult to injury of the huge cash outlay you agreed to (for an ROI that will never, ever, materialize).

Moreover, as previously indicated, you can NEVER assume that all (or sometimes, even any) of the solution providers will:

  • ask the right questions to understand the challenges
  • do the right due diligence to ensure their solution will solve those challenges
  • be honest about their capabilities (or, outside of the dev team, even understand those capabilities)

because, chances are, as I have indicated many times, everyone in the ecosystem exists to make money off of YOU, but not necessarily to help you. (Especially when too many vendors took too much money and are now under extreme pressures to fulfill ridiculous growth requirements in just a few years or risk massive layoffs, being folded into a bigger player, or getting dropped from the portfolio entirely before going bankrupt.) There’s no time to do it right, just to sell, sell, sell. (Which is why we keep advocating employing an independent consultant to help you with selection, project planning, and project assurance — since their remuneration depends on helping you, not someone else.)

So remember this before you start looking at big suites as there is a good chance you’ll likely be paying 10 times what you should be (based on what you are using) while still only getting 25% of what you actually need in the best case. (And there’s nothing wrong with building your own Best-of-Breed ecosystem, even if you need to add an orchestration player to that mix, if that is what maximizes the return on every dollar spent.)

(Supplier) Diversity is Dead!

Editor’s Note: This is an extended version of a comment that was made in response to an inquiry by THE REVELATOR on LinkedIn about the progression of supplier diversity.

The simple fact of the matter is thus: diversity threatens fascists who want authoritarian dictatorships. This means that as long as far right wing agenda politicians keep getting elected in first world countries (which has been happening more than not over the last decade), not only is DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) not going anywhere, but it is going to be rolled back, and done so faster than most policies that came before in countries which equated diversity progress with measurable outcomes.

The sad reality of the situation is that as soon as the board/chief/president of an organization or governmental department concluded that you were not diverse if you did not have x% of whatever minority the board/chief/president thought you should have x% of by time y, and started equating diversity success with measurable outcomes, we went from a situation where “equal opportunity” was replaced with “minority designated role”. And instead of being a further step in the right direction, it was often a step backwards. Under equal opportunity, if two candidates were roughly equal for a role, the role is to go to the minority candidate. And that’s a good thing. However, under “minority designated role”, non-minorities are banned from consideration, and this is not a good thing if there are no qualified minority candidates available for the role. A senior role that should demand a full University degree (Bachelor’s or higher), a decade of experience, and one or more certifications may end up going to someone who just has a 2 year associates degree, only 3 years of work experience (barely relevant to the role), and no certifications as that is the most qualified person who applied.

What many firms fail to take into account when considering diversity mandates is the number of qualified candidates in the minority who are actually in the vicinity of, and who are then actually interested in, and willing to take on, the position. For example, if you were to demand that half of your coding team need to be women, good luck with that when only 25% of STEM graduates in North America are female. (So if you did get 50%, a lot of other companies wouldn’t get any female hires.) Or if you demand that 1/5th of your workforce be hispanic, to mirror the US population distribution, but it’s an in office job in a major city in an expensive neighbourhood where 95% of the local population is white, good luck with that. You might meet your quota, but you know that the vast majority are not going to be qualified for the role.

And DEI didn’t stop there at some organizations and institutions in North America. As soon as people figured out that a DEI program or a particular minority designation could be used to exclude people of certain religion(s) they didn’t like, it went from a tool of inclusion to a tool of subversive discrimination. (So much for equity and inclusion!) Then came the backlash; the labelling of anything even remotely related to DEI, equal opportunity, or humanity as woke; and a full on assault by the fascists and authoritarians.

More specifically, in countries where they have enough power in the government, the authoritarians are dismantling any and all programs they have control over, barring any third party organizations with such policies from doing business with their government, and doing whatever they can to overturn all DEI and Equal Opportunity legislation they can, as far back as they can.

Moreover, given that these far right wing parties are being well funded by donations from the tech bros who spend more time meddling in global politics than running their own ventures, there are not many options for progression of ANY diversity on the global stage.